


joyful and triumphant

by thermodynamicActivity (chlorinetrifluoride)



Series: The Collegestuck 'Verse [43]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Collegestuck, Gen, Humanstuck, christmas gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-26
Updated: 2014-12-26
Packaged: 2018-03-03 15:03:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2855096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chlorinetrifluoride/pseuds/thermodynamicActivity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This being his last year of college, and Karkat being a sentimental asshole, he convinces Gamzee to lug a Christmas tree into their suite a few weeks before finals, which he hopes his suitemates will help decorate. Not that it actually happens that way. He pretends not to be hurt by this, by having to walk past the bare tree every day. Meanwhile, people may have something else planned.</p>
            </blockquote>





	joyful and triumphant

**Author's Note:**

> merry christmas  
> actually not angst for once  
> rated more for cursing than anything else  
> i am full of warm fuzzies at the amount of kudos this series has gotten in the few days since i've uploaded

_December 2014_

Karkat strides across campus through the swirling snow from the library back to Hendrix, bone tired after cramming for a neuroscience final with Jade for four hours. Standing at just over five foot one, he was not made for this kind of weather.

People wave to him, and he ignores them all.

He’s legitimately ready to punch the first person to look at him funny square in the face, still pissed about something that has absolutely nothing to do with the snow or the exams hanging over his head like a sword of Damocles.

Last time he’d been in his dorm, the Christmas tree was still as devoid of decoration as it’d been the day he’d convinced Gamzee to help him carry it into their room.

That shouldn’t have made him angry, but it did.

It’s not as if he expected anyone he lived with to give as much of a shit about Christmas as he did, but he’d held out hope at the same time. It was their final year of college, after all.

He’d always pretended to give a fuck about the things that excited them, so he’d hoped for a bit the same in return.

Instead, Dave, Eridan, and Sollux had all complained loudly about the tree and the fact that it took up so much space in their living room as soon as they’d seen it. John and Gamzee appeared to be ignoring its existence.

So Karkat walks into their suite and kicks the box of ornaments on the floor.

 _What’s the point in decorating a tree alone?_  he asks himself.

Dave nods at him from the couch, and he scowls back.

 _Maybe I’ll just leave the damn thing the way it is until after Christmas_ , he thinks, as he opens the door to his room,  _to remind me of how much of a fucking idiot I am._

Sollux, who has late classes this semester, is nowhere to be found. This infuriates Karkat even more. There’s nobody here to glare at.

He takes his neuroscience textbook to bed and, in order to distract himself, begins to read.

* * *

It’s fully dark, twenty-three degrees, and snowing in earnest when Equius, Sollux, and Roxy finally get out of their last class for the evening.

Sollux, skinny as a bean pole and possessing zero insulation against the elements save his pea coat, starts shivering as soon as the frigid air hits him. Equius, being muscular and 100% strong, does not react. Roxy, who spiked her thermos of hot chocolate with more than a splash of bourbon before she’d even left for math, is equally nonplussed. The alcohol in her bloodstream keeps her warm.

Even with the roaring wind, the three of them walk triumphantly, having gotten their third exams back during the last lecture. Unsurprisingly, Equius and Sollux tied for the highest grade in the class - 94.

And while it isn’t up to her usual standard, Roxy’s proud of her mark just the same - an 85. 

 _"Fuckin early Christmas miracle,"_  she’d commented.

She kisses Equius on the cheek for tutoring her before the test and causes him to sweat, no mean feat given the temperature.

At this, Sollux descends into paroxysms of wheezing laughter, still fighting off the same cold he’s had on and off since the first week of November. 

Their voices ring out into the winter night, as they rehash details of the test. Equius claps Sollux on the back and nearly sends him flying into the snow.

"Okay, raise yer hands if you actually understood our prof’s solution for the heat equation," Roxy says, admirably sidestepping a snowdrift.

Sollux’s teeth chatter. He momentarily stops walking so he can wrap his scarf around his face tightly. “Don’t thpeak to me about heat until we get back to civilization.”

In response to her previous statement, Equius goes on a long-winded explanation about eigenvalues and boundary function conditions while Roxy tries to keep up with him.

She should have pregamed this class harder, maybe then she’d understand.

It looks like a winter wonderland out here, she thinks, the rolling curves of snow around them largely unsullied by footsteps. Then she starts contemplating wave-form equations and realizes she’s probably been studying way too hard.

“Did you get everything I said?” Equius asks. 

“Totally,” Roxy replies.

The cold continues to needle into the trio, occasionally coming in great gusts of wind that force them to stop walking. 

Roxy’s hands feel numb when she tries to rub them together. Putting them inside her jacket does little to rectify the lack of sensation. When she eyes at them in the paltry light of the streetlamps, they’ve gone pink, and at the fingertips, an angry cherry red.

Sollux removes his gloves, stuffs them into her hands, and shoves his own hands into his pockets without a word. Even if he’s not as tall as Equius, he’s still got half a foot on Roxy. She has to incline her head up, in the direction of the falling snow, in order to look him in the eye.

"Are you sure…?"

He nods. She slips them on.

“Thank you.”

During their walk, her phone goes off.

She stops to dig around in her bag until she finds it, cupping a hand around it to shield it from the snow.

"Captor, it’s nine-fifteen."

Sollux pulls the scarf off his mouth so he can speak unobstructed. “Already? You sure?”

“I’m starin’ at my alarm, idiot.”

He sighs, extricates a pill from the back pocket of his jeans, and dry swallows it without breaking his stride.

If you’d gone up to Roxy back in freshman year and told her that she’d eventually become friends with these weirdos, she’d have given you an incredulous stare and politely suggested that you had to be drunker than she.

Now, on the tail end of her penultimate semester of college, it doesn’t seem strange at all. They’ve had a shitload of classes in common.

Roxy blows an errant lock of blonde hair out of her eyes. Much to her consternation, Equius still won’t shut up about differential equations. Somehow, she can still hear him over the wind. She decides to change the subject.

"So who’d you guys get for secret Santa?"

Equius quirks an eyebrow. “Didn’t Karkat forbid us from telling each other?”

Roxy snorts.

“Since when do we listen to him about anything? C’mon dude, there’s really no issue unless the actual person we got finds out who we are. Unless you’re a pussy, that is.”

"I received a most intriguing name from the hat," Equius replies, trying to sound mysterious and failing completely, sweat beading on his forehead.

"So then… you got Aradia?"

The scandalized look on his face tells her the answer to that, even if he won’t say anything either way. She looks to Sollux.

"And you?"

Even though his eyes are partly covered by a layer of dark yellow wool, she can see them narrow into hateful slits once he registers the question.

_Interesting._

_Intriguing_ , as Equius would say.

"Eridan?" she guesses.

"Worthe," he says.

"Kankri?"

"Even worthe."

"Can’t get much worse than Kankri."

"Oh yeth it can." The lenses of his glasses glint dangerously.

"Then who?"

“Vrithka," he spits. Well then.

"Touche," Roxy responds, temporarily at a loss for words. Sollux really does have all the worst luck in this life.

A few silent minutes pass, punctuated by nothing but snowfall and the crunch of their shoes as they walk. Then, Roxy gets an  _idea._

"So send her a computer virus, that’s less than thirty bucks."

"Ath if I’d wathte any of my time coding a thingle thing for that thadistic bitch, even a viruth.”

The lights of the library building glow to their left. Equius shifts uncomfortably in front of them, a gesture that has nothing to do with the cold.

"Oh, that’th right," Sollux realizes aloud. "You’re thtill friendth with her."

"I tolerate her," Equius says evenly.

A beat.

"You stare at her ass," Roxy says.

Equius starts sweating again and she grins. She’s on a roll today.

"I got Jade so I’m prolly gonna get her something she’ll actually appreciate," she explains, before either of them ask. "Like another frog, or a bio textbook, or an economy sized bottle of no-doz."

It’s not until Roxy glances at her surroundings that she realizes that they’re only about ten feet away from the student union.

She’s nearly back at Gray and yet they’re still walking with her.

"I dunno if either of you is payin’ attention, but uh, you guys kinda live in the opposite direction. And Eq, I’m pretty sure you’re still in Douglass, which is even harder in the opposite direction.”

Sollux shrugs and keeps walking.

Equius is similarly undeterred by her revelation, and offers explanation. “It’d be kind of mean for us to let you walk all the way back alone, wouldn’t it? Besides, it’s rather dangerous for women to walk around unchaperoned after dark.”

Roxy and Sollux exchange fleeting glances of derision at that. Equius was truly something else entirely.

Her roommate called it all too accurately when she said that he operated with a tent pole jammed up his ass at all times. 

But even so, Roxy appreciates the gesture. 

“Oh, well,” she begins. “That’s nice of you guys. If you want, you can come over. I’ll heat up some eggnog and everything.”

When they reach Gray, Roxy leads them to a side entrance, pelvic thrusting at the sensor vigorously in order to unlock the door. Equius shakes his head, eyebrows disappearing into his hair, particularly when it works.

Roxy holds the door open for the pair of them. 

“What? My ID was in the front of my pants.”

As they walk through the hallway, a girl clad in nothing but a towel sprints from the bathroom to her own room. Roxy glances at Equius to see his reaction, but he’s managing a pretty airtight poker face, except for the twitch in his left eye.

She unlocks the door to her room with one hand and turns on the light with the other, a little surprised when she finds nobody there.

“She must still be studying with Terezi, then.”

The left side of her room is covered in lolcat posters, with one bearing the words “Ceiling Cat is watching you masturbate” affixed, unsurprisingly, to the ceiling. Compositions have been strewn across the desk on that side, and the bookcase jammed with the works of various literary theorists.

On the nightstand sits a small microwave. Equius takes a seat on the bed and its Hello Kitty sheets, looking strangely in place.

The wall he sits against has been plastered over by a giant chart, containing the yearbook pictures of more than a dozen people, speculation scrawled beneath their names, and lines drawn between many of the pictures.

“I see Nepeta’s still got her shipping wall,” Sollux comments.

Roxy laughs.

“Yeah, you should see how many people you’ve been linked to over the years.”

She takes their coats and drapes them over the hissing radiator.

Roxy’s side also contains posters, but hers are of wizards.

Calculus, sociology, and computer science textbooks crammed into the bookcase, and a calendar on the wall. A mini-fridge below her nightstand and no less than twelve bottles of various types of alcohol atop it, all top shelf. Seated on her bed, Sollux has to admit that Roxy has taste. 

She removes a container out of her fridge, pulls three cups off a shelf in her closet, and fills each cup about halfway with eggnog. As an afterthought, she also plucks a shot glass off her nightstand.

“How much alcohol do you guys want?” she asks, filling the shot glass with bourbon.

“One I suppose,” Equius says. “A small one.”

Sollux thinks about the mountain of homework awaiting him when he gets back to his room.

“Make mine a double.”

A few minutes pass, and, slightly loosened up by the alcohol, Equius allows himself a grin at the prospect of having to buy Aradia a gift.

"You’re a woman," he says to Roxy. "Any advice?"

She wiggles her eyebrows at him. “I think she’s got enough skulls, but I think she’d probably appreciate a bullwhip if you know what I mean.”

Sollux cackles while Equius breaks into a sweat for perhaps the fifth time that evening.

They all keep drinking. Around half past ten, Roxy refills both her and Sollux’s cup.

“Another double?”

“Why the hell not?”

He always flushes the color as a tomato after two drinks, but he cannot be bothered to give a shit at the moment. However, even after Roxy passes him his drink, he continues to gaze at her.

“We’re thtill meeting up later for,  _y’know_ , aren’t we?” he asks in a low voice.

Equius chokes on his drink and stares between the two of them, eyes wide as saucers. Once Roxy realizes what Equius is implying, the tips of her ears go bright red.

“Not for that,” she says, throwing a pillow at him. “Jesus Christ, for someone with the sensibilities of nun, you sure got a dirty mind.”

“That’s hardly what I was—”

“Sure it isn’t. And yes, Sollux, to answer your question, I’ll be over to help. What time?”

“Two.”

Equius then assumes it’s a for project, and in a loose sense, he’s not wrong.

* * *

Instead of getting any more studying done in bed, Karkat passes out for six hours, textbook still open on the sheets beside him.

Sollux gets back to their room at around midnight, takes one look at his roommate and his even snoring, and leaves again.

* * *

_Dave glances over the boxes stacked against one wall. “Do we have everything we need?”_

_“Christ almighty, how much shit can we possibly put on this thing?” Roxy asks._

* * *

At quarter to three in the morning, as he drifts through that twilight stupor between sleep and waking, Karkat awakens briefly at the sound of voices coming from the living room.

_But that’s impossible. Who’d invite someone over on a weeknight so close to finals?_

Eyes half open, he takes a sip from the can of iced tea on his desk and goes under again.

At half past three, he hears the sound of speech and people moving around once again. He awakens, this time in earnest. Yes, there are definitely people here at this godawful hour. _Jesus actual fuck._

He opens the door, fully intent on barging into the living room and going on an indignant tirade against the inconsiderate fuckers in the living room, but stops when he notices the box of garland on the floor.

His mouth drops open.

Everyone else is too absorbed by their respective tasks to notice him..

Roxy sips from her cup of egg nog, as she, Aradia, and Dave thread plastic icicles and snowflakes, along with little ornaments shaped like candy canes, reindeer, and gingerbread men onto the tree.

_They’re decorating. Decorating the tree._

Roxy’s still working when, grinning, she begins to sing quietly, in a mellow mezzo-soprano.

_"God rest ye merry undergrads, may ye all finals pass."_

Dave joins in with the next line, his voice an octave below hers.

_"Remember you’ve five cheat sheets, to assist you with each class."_

Roxy again.  _"Except of course for Diff Eq, sure to kill thine ass."_

Sollux snort-laughs at that.

 _"Oh, tidings of test curves and A’s, test curves and A’s,"_  he sings nasally. 

“ _Oh, tidings of test curves and A’s_ ,” the three of them sing in unison.

Aradia opens her bag, extricates a few of her own ornaments - little skulls wearing Santa hats - and starts to hang those. 

Eridan crosses his arms. “This is gonna be the world’s creepiest fuckin tree, I swear.”

"It’ts our tree, of course it’s demented," Sollux points out, while he and Gamzee struggle to wind a string of lights around the evergreen’s branches.

John stands on the armrest of the couch and manages to affix a golden star to the top. 

"Right, so, we needa get all this shit done before Shouty wakes up," Dave says, evidently the one in charge of this operation. "What’s left?"

John jumps off the couch and glances into the nearest box. “The glass baubles. And the garland.”

"Oh yeah, Di Stri sent weird robotic ornaments." Roxy points at yet another box.

“Has anyone checked those shits to make sure they don’t shoot lasers or nothin’?” Eridan asks.

It’s a testament to that distinct possibility that nobody laughs.

At that point, Karkat tears his eyes away from the scene. Gently, so as not to arouse their attention, he shuts the door to his room, still in shock.

Rendering him speechless is no small achievement, but that’s exactly what’s happened.

_They’re all.. All of them… Trimming the tree. To surprise me._

Karkat blinks back the burn prickling behind his eyes, pinches his nose and wills it away.

Peeling back the covers on his bed and sliding into it, Karkat attempts to go back to sleep. Unable to, he satisfies himself with grinning stupidly at the wall.

He manages to pass out after another hour, but less than five minutes after he does, someone’s shaking him awake. Annoyed, he rubs his eyes and glares.

“What the actual fuck.”

“Shut up, asshat. It’s important,” Sollux replies.

He grabs Karkat’s arm, yanks him into the living room, and gestures at the fully-decorated tree and the people - Roxy, Gamzee, Aradia, Eridan, John, and Dave - who huddle around it admiring their work. 

“Satisfied?” Sollux asks through his godawful lisp.

Dave plugs a cord into the wall outlet and the entire thing lights up.

Seized once more with the urge to cry, Karkat can do nothing but nod mutely, Sollux’s arm around his shoulders.


End file.
